BJ's nocabbages

20 January 2019

The murder of Jamal Khashoggi has brought intense focus on Turkish leader Recep T. Erdogan's campaign against Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman. I will explore a couple of major reasons behind the purpoted angst of the Turkish leader.

Who was
Jamal Khashoggi?Jamal Khashoggi was a Saudi Arabian journalist
and an insider in the Saudi royal court. He fled to the U.S after running afoul
of

Jamal Khashoggi

the current royal administration in Saudi Arabia. A vociferous critic of the
Saudi Arabian royal house, especially the Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, he
was a columnist for the Washington Post newspaper and head of an Arab news
channel.

On 2 October 2018, he visited the Saudi Arabian consulate in
Istanbul to collect documents pertaining to the dissolution of his marriage to
a Saudi Arabian woman; the documents were necessary for him to get married to
his Turkish fiancée. He was murdered inside the consulate by Saudi Arabian
intelligence officials. Till date, no trace of his body has been found.

The murder of Jamal Khashoggi has since thrown West Asia
into turmoil. The Khashoggi saga has embroiled Saudi Arabia and Turkey in a war
of words, with the U.S. squeezed between its two important allies. The
following are the major players in the Khashoggi saga: Saudi Arabia, Turkey,
the United States, Iran, Qatar, and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Turkey directly implicated Saudi Arabia of carrying out the
murder on its soil, even pointing a finger at the Crown Prince Mohammad bin
Salman for his involvement. Turkish President Recep T. Erdogan claimed the
possession of

Recep T. Erdogan (Source: from Wikipedia)

unimpeachable evidence of the involvement of the Saudi Crown
Prince, suggesting that the order for the murder “came from the highest
authorities in the Saudi administration”.

Why did the Turkish President
get so worked up about the murder of a Saudi dissident?The answer to this
seemingly distasteful question lies in the ‘great power’ ambitions of the two countries.

We know that Saudi Arabia is the de facto leader of the
Muslim World; however, Turkey, under Recep T. Erdogan, wants to become the
centre of the Muslim World, just like the Ottoman empire was before its
eventual collapse in 1922. Erdogan, an Islamist, has a grand vision of becoming
the voice of the Muslim World, and he has made no effort to conceal his
ambitions.

Erdogan is a firm supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Egyptian
extremist organization with a wide support base in the Muslim World. The Muslim
Brotherhood is an anti-monarchy, pro-Sharia group. The Muslim Brotherhood came
to power in Egypt through its political party in 2012, a development that rang
alarm bells in the capitals of the monarchies in the Muslim World.

The anti-monarchy, pro-Sharia core ideology of the Muslim
Brotherhood raised the hackles of the Saudi monarchy who felt threatened by the
hardcore Islamist who was now the president of Egypt, a neighbouring country. Alarmed
by the spectre of the spread of the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideology in Saudi
Arabia, the Saudi Arabia royal house instigated the Egyptian army to oust the
Muslim Brotherhood from power and take over the country. Thus, in July 2013,
barely a few months after coming to power, the Islamist President of Egypt was
ousted and jailed on charges of terrorism.

The Saudi Arabian involvement in the ousting of the
democratically elected government in Egypt angered Erdogan, a die-hard
supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood. The murder of Jamal Khashoggi came in a
blessing for him to put the Saudis on the mat. He leaked evidence of the involvement
of the Saudi Crown Prince in the Khashoggi murder case in a calibrated manner;
in fact, the method was so effective that it has been called “death by a
thousand leaks”.

Saudi Arabia botched its response to the Khashoggi murder
saga; from firmly denying its involvement to calling it a rogue intelligence
operation without concurrence of the royal house, the Saudi Arabian government came
across as confused and unprepared for the massive backlash from the
international community.

There is another reason
behind Turkey’s shrill campaign against Saudi

Arabia: Fethullah Gulen. Gulen,
a friend-turned-foe of Erdogan, lives in self-imposed exile in the United
States. He runs a social and charity organization engaged mostly in education activities.
His organization is widely popular across Turkey, with millions of members,
with thousands of them in influential positions in the administration.

Erdogan accused Gulen of instigating the July 2016 military
coup. Thousands of

Fethullah Gulen

his followers were arrested while another 1.5 lakh were
fired from their jobs in the administration, including in the military. Turkish
jails are full of Gulen’s followers with allegations of vendetta flying thick.

Erdogan has demanded the extradition of Gulen from the U.S.,
a request Washington has repeatedly turned down, citing lack of credible
evidence from the Turkish government.

It is believed that Erdogan is using the Jamal Khashoggi
issue as a bargaining chip: Erdogan will stop badgering the Saudi Royal House (i.e.,
Crown Prince MbS) if the U.S. hands over Gulen to Turkey.

Why will the U.S. agree to this arrangement? A major reason
could be the extraordinary pressure from Saudi Arabia on Donald Trump; Trump
sees MbS as an important cog in the U.S. policy in the region.

If you have been following the Jamal Khashoggi saga, you
would have noticed that the noise from Turkey against MbS has subsided
considerably; maybe the Gulen factor is at play. We do not yet know.

19 January 2019

Muhammad bin Salman, the Crown Prince of Saudi
Arabia, has come to dominate the politics of his country and the region. His policies
and action (both domestic and foreign) are changing the political landscape in
West Asia.

Who is Mohammad bin Salman?Mohammad bin Salman is the Crown Prince of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. As
the Crown Prince, he is next in line to succeed his father and King, Salman bin
Abdulaziz Al Saud (who is also the Prime Minister of the kingdom).

Virtually unknown in the corridors of power before
his meteoric rise, MbS, as he is popularly called, was appointed the Crown
Prince in June 2017. Today, he is also the kingdom’s Deputy Prime Minister, Minister
of Defence, Chairman of the Council for Economic and Development Affairs, and Chairman
of the Council of Political and Security Affairs.

MbS is the most powerful person in today’s Saudi
Arabia. The King, his father, trusts him blindly and has stood by him even as
the calls for the Crown Prince’s removal for his involvement in the botched
Yemen War and the Jamal Khashoggi murder saga grow louder.

Reformer.
MbS is seen as an ardent reformer by his supporters. They point to the several
reforms he has ushered in the deeply conservative country: lifting the ban on
women drivers, allowing cinemas and music concerts, and introducing a spate of
economic reforms. The once all-powerful religious police have now been restricted
to the barracks.

Megalomaniac.
MbS’ detractors, and there are many, describe him as megalomaniacal and
impetuous. They cite his catastrophic war campaign in Yemen and the ill-planned
embargo against Qatar as examples of his whimsical behaviour.

They also describe him as power-hungry, someone who
cannot tolerate dissent; the jailing of hundreds of political dissidents,
including women activists, is a case in point.

Saad Hariri

The Saad Hariri Incident. Another example is his treatment of the Prime
Minister of Lebanon, Saad Hariri. When Hariri arrived in the Kingdom to meet
King Salman, he was bundled to an unknown location; there was a complete blackout
of the news concerning Hariri, a leader of a sovereign nation. One week later,
Hariri was forced to tender his resignation from the prime minister’s post of
his country from the soil of a foreign nation. His freedom from the clutches of
the Saudi Arabian government came only after the French President Emmanuel Macron
went to Riyadh to negotiate his release. Once back home, Hariri withdrew his
resignation. Analysts believe that he paid the price due to his inability
to stem the growing influence of Iran and its Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, a Shia
militant group.

Bakr bin Laden

Whipping the Cream of the Saudi Society. The
incident that jolted the elite Saudis most took place in November 2017. Around
200 prominent Saudis, including the former Crown Prince Muhammad bin Nayef and
Bakr bin Laden, the head of Saudi Binladin Group (a construction giant), were
rounded up and detained for several months on the orders of MbS. The entire
operation was described as a campaign against corruption and embezzlement; the
detained were accused of enriching themselves at the cost of the Saudi State.
It is believed that a few of those detained were tortured and forced into
giving up their wealth. Bakr bin Laden and his two brothers were forced
to transfer their 36 per cent shareholding in Saudi Binladin Group to a
state-controlled company, overseen by MbS.

Hello!

I am employed as a Teacher and an Executive Editor with an education training company. In this space I blog on my favorite interests - politics and economics - and anything else that rouses my curiosity. My Twitter handle is @nocabbagesbj.